Great Scott! What’s the date? Oh thank goodness, we’ve still got time.  Listen, I know this may sound “heavy” to you, but we’ve got to get you to the Midsouth Makers soldering class on October 8^th at noon or the consequences could be dire! I can’t tell you why it’s important without creating a temporal paradox, but I can promise you that learning how to build a RBBB (“Really Bare Bones Board”) Clone will be pivotal in your future in some way.  An RBBB is one of the smallest, most affordable arduino-compatible boards available right now.  You don’t even need any plutonium to power this baby, just plug it straight into the breadboard that the Makers will be providing to all the class participants. How many gigawatts is it?  Where we’re going, we don’t need gigawatts, just bring a soldering iron and the rest will be provided. Once you’ve completed this class, you’ll have you’re very own arduino compatible microcontroller, power cable, data cable, and breadboard to build it all on, the combination of which should help you save you from – oh no, I’ve already said too much! Hurry and sign-up on the events page at the following link: http://www.midsouthmakers.org/events/.  Then you too can say, “I finally made something that works!”

Details

Class: Soldering Part II: RBBB Clone

Cost: $35

Date, Time, & Location: October 8th  at the Space at Noon.

What to bring: Soldering Iron

What you get: An arduino compatible microcontroller, power cable, data cable, and a breadboard to build it on, plus a greater knowledge of soldering and circuitry.

You must sign-up before the day of the class so that we know how many parts to order!

You can do so at the following link: http://www.midsouthmakers.org/events/

Sonny recently shared his current progress of his UAV Quad Copter project and included a test flight video.

So today I had my first real flights with my quadcopter UAV.   The setup is pretty advanced and it takes a lot to get up to speed.  I’ve learned a lot from my build.  I made custom printed PLA motor mounts, which have worked out really well to hold them on the end of aluminum pipes.  Unfortunately the cross in the middle which is also PLA could not handle the rough landings and cracked.  I’ve secured it for the time being, but I think I’ll be milling something better Wednesday.  If I can work out the stability issues, I’ll bring it Friday.  Anyway, check out the first flight/set of flights.

Ben sent me this writeup of his progress on his Rep Rap Prusa printer. Here’s his progress using one of the teensyduinos that PJRC: Electronic Projects with Components sent us.

I am currently building a rep rap Prusa 3D printer and one feature I want to add is a Graphic Display to display the nozzle temperature and the heated bed temperature. Once I had the Teensy in my hands, I rummaged through my parts bin and found a 128×64 graphic LCD.

As an Arduino newbie, I was blown away how easy the Arduino environment is to get up and running. Within minutes, I was able to get the IDE installed and the Libraries installed for the Teensy.

Using the GLCD example on the Teensy’s website, I populated my breadboard. The Crystal Fontz LCD (CFAG12864B-YYH-N) I used in the project has the NT7107C driver, not the KS0108 found in the GLCD example. The pin out on the Display ended up being different, but worked just fine.

My plans are to use the I2C output on the GEN7 Prusa electronics to send the temperature data to the Teensy over the i2c bus. For prototyping, I used the “Bus Pirate” to send i2c commands to the teensy to simulate the GEN7 electronics.

This Friday February 18th at Republic Coffee we’ll have members showing off their Arduino projects and answering questions about the Arduino platform. We’ve had a lot of interest in getting started with various Arduino boards so come learn more about the great things you can do with an open source platform.

What is an Arduino? Arduino is a physical computing platform and a software development environment for controlling various things like motors, sensors and even entire devices. The hardware and development environment are open source and there is a very large community of developers and hardware hackers out there working on projects. The hardware is also quite inexpensive. There are also “Getting Started” kits that are a package of items to help you hit the ground running with your Arduino.

Prusa Mendel in building stage

Prusa Mendel Showing off Glow in the dark ABS parts

This Friday Feb 11th 7pm @ the space come check out what we’ve been working on with 3d printers. We’ll have 3 Mendel printers in various stages of assembly. Come by and ask questions, hang out, and see the progress. Dan and Claudio will be working on early stages of assembly and Sonny will be working on later stages of assembly of his Mendel. Nick’s Makerbot will also be at the space to show off differences between it and the Mendels.

If 3d Printers aren’t your thing then feel free to ask for a tour around the space. Our Friday meetings are open to the public. Come by and see what we’re all about and of course, feel free to sign up for a membership!